2008 Year in Review

Before the second weekend of year 2009 is finished (and I’ve let the first weekend go by already), it is time to look back to the first year of this blog and reflect on what has happened.

April 2008: Created sagada-igorot.blogspot.com which later became blog.sagada-igorot.com. My first 27 posts were created this month though I backdated some of these to cover the earlier months of the year. I don’t remember why I did that. Maybe to fool readers that I launched the blog at the start of the year? That doesn’t make sense.

May 2008: My reaction to an ignorant use of the word “igorot” was the first post that gained attention amongst readers. The offender was a Filipina based in France. My personal request through an email for the blogger to correct her ignorance was ignored. I guess if people choose to be ignorant, then, there's nothing I can do about it. For other Filipinos that are broad minded and who still have an incorrect perception of my people, then, hopefully this blog will change their minds.

June 2008: Announced the re-launch of my site, Sagada Igorot Online. The original site that was launched in 1997 was called “Kamulo and Kosta’s Home”. I'm currently working on a re-launch to officially rename the site as SaGaDa-iGoRoT.com.

July 2008: 0 posts as my mind wandered away from blogging. Zero, jero, wala, maiwed, itlog, nothing, none. Did I say zero posts? Perhaps it had something to do with the nice weather and the longer days of the Chicago summer. Who wants to type anything after spending a full day swimming with the boys at the pool / beach?

August 2008: Featured posts on BIBBAK Illinois and the Olympics.

September 2008: Did another take on Sagada and Drugs. For another post called “An Igorot Moment”, I hunted down a photo of Marky Cielo wearing such shirt in the Internet.

October 2008: Started the Bloggables series.

November 2008: Obama is elected president and I received my first blog award. (Somehow, we are related, hehehe.) I was nominated and voted upon as the Filipino Blog of the Week for 2 consecutive weeks at the Composed Gentleman’s website. They gave me a Hall of Famer “trophy” to display on my side bar. I never knew there were actually some readers who cared enough to vote for my blog in another website.

December 2008 was the Marky Cielo month. I wrote a couple of blog posts on the death of the young Igorot actor, Marky Cielo, and lo and behold, my blog traffic skyrocketed to heights I’ve never thought possible. The total number of hits I received for the month of December alone was almost x times the number of hits I received from April to November COMBINED. My friend, T is right. Internet surfers are crazy about celebrities. This was a different kind of celebrity though – he was the first showbiz personality to declare on national TV that he was a proud Igorot. Eat your heart out, Martin Nievera. See chart to see how my December traffic compares to other months.


Moving Forward: There’re a lot of plans for this blog and sagada-igorot.com in general for the coming year. I hope my readers will stay with me as I continue to blog and build on sagada-igorot.com. Matago-tago tako am-in. Was-in di mamangset.